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Tuesday, November 27, 2012

The right is trying to gin up fear for the 'fiscal cliff'. It's not a cliff in any sense of the word. Tax rates will go up only slightly to Clinton levels. Mitt Romney won't be to happy as his taxes will increase by about 50%. The middle class will take a hit, but compared to what the Republicans had in mind to do to them, the tax increase is a warm bath. Even at that, the middle class can be taken care of anytime between now and April 2014 when the taxes will actually be due. The spending cuts are another matter, but even they aren't really all that draconian. The cuts the Republicans claim to want would be far worse.

Oddly they claim the loss of defense spending will torpedo the economy. Doesn't that mean the government has been creating jobs? I thought that didn't ever, ever happen.

The right keeps saying that the real problem is the deficit, but when adjusted for inflation and the increase in population, the Federal debt is no bigger now then it was when Reagan left office, if not smaller. They keep comparing it to the GDP, but the GOP tanked the economy, the GDP should be much larger.

The Republicans want Obama to 'compromise' and adopt the Romney 'plan'. Bush never actually won an election, yet he claimed a mandate and 'political capital'. Obama has won two elections by landslide margins, and the exit polls indicate that 70% of voters support his plan to raise taxes, but he needs to do exactly what the Republicans want as a 'compromise'?

The Romney plan calls for closing loopholes and rate cuts for the rich. The plan is to be 'revenue neutral', meaning it doesn't do anything to cut the deficit. That is except they claim this would result in more revenue by magically growing the economy. Historically the opposite happens, cutting taxes on the rich tanks the economy.

In fact you could balance the budget by closing loopholes on the rich. Eliminating all their deductions, tax deferments, special rates on capital gains and such would raise exactly enough to balance the budget. This isn't in their plan, when they say, 'close loopholes', they mean your 'loopholes', not theirs. Forcing the rich and corporations to pay US taxes instead of hiding money offshore would generate another 500 billion on top of that.

Producing goods here and reducing oil imports would ad trillions to the GDP, and generate still more tax revenue. We could have the sort of booming economy that they have in China, but that's not in the Republican compromise. You can build a third world oligarchy that way.

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